


Ghosts

by zulu



Category: House M.D.
Genre: 07-04, F/M, for:leiascully
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-10
Updated: 2007-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:04:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zulu/pseuds/zulu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More about Paris than the pairing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Futurefic, for , who let me interrupt our dinner (and use her pencil) to scribble bits of this on receipts she had in her pocket, when I told her that all of a sudden I had phrases that needed writing. Warning: there's character death, and I'm not usually the sort to warn for that, so.

Everything about Paris is so surprising--sudden courtyards and private alleys behind locked gates, massive squares that open out from narrow, shadowed streets--that it's no surprise at all when he turns a corner in le Marais and finds her there.

This isn't, never has been, some Hollywood romance, so he doesn't nearly run her down in a fit of absent-mindedness, and she doesn't slip away like the dreams he reaches for each morning. He smiles, a tiny pursing of his lips, more at fate for bringing them here, together--_the city of lovers_, the thought is never far from his mind--than at the act of finding her again on the far side of the world, years after he's left Princeton without ever once thinking of going back.

She's standing kitty-corner to him. It's a winding, cobbled street, packed with lines of parked motorcycles. Tiny shops spill out onto the sloping sidewalks, bright fabrics snapping in the wind, ripe fruits lending their colours to the grey frieze-fronted buildings. He's dressed in cashmere and camelhair to turn away the cold and the dampness in the wind. Her dark curls spill over the shoulders of her black cloth coat, and she's wearing heels high enough to be stylish, even on these crooked streets. When she sees him, she crosses over, and he can only stand and watch her, smiling faintly, hands deep in his pockets, suddenly uncertain.

Perhaps she says, _It's good to see you_, warmly, or else _It's a small world, isn't it?_, with a twist of her lips that only misses being bitter because she's not; she's better than that. Better than him. He ducks his head to hide his smile, or maybe his eyes. When he looks up, he's ready to play the man she knew, and he says, _Would you like to have dinner with me?_ and he knows she won't refuse.

They find a small restaurant like an Escher print, their feet stumbling over unexpected stairs, their table tucked into a hidden nook, their eyes following the swirl of mosaics on every surface. He uses his schoolboy French, twenty years forgotten and heavy with a québecois accent. She laughs and points at the menu, refusing his help and willing to take the risk of ignorance, and he thinks the waiters like her better. She smiles except when she uses the rim of her wine glass as a veil, and then her eyes are more lonely than any he's seen outside his own mirror. _Elle a une telle tristesse_, he thinks, and even after two weeks alone in Paris he hasn't won back the trick of thinking in French, but the words rise like strange fish to the surface of his mind and he can't push them away.

She's staying in a rented apartment. _Just for a week_, she says, _a quick getaway, a vacation_, but the truth he reads in her elegant fingers arranging and rearranging her cutlery says _an escape_. He has a hotel room and no timeline, but he doesn't mention it and she doesn't ask.

They take the metro, afterwards, and in the warm breath of the rushing trains he stands nearer to her than he has to. If she leans back into his chest, it's best to blame the sway of the train, the accidental shove of rush hour passengers. They switch lines twice, and when they climb the stairs into the street the wind has settled and it's night. The shop doors have rolled shut, the news kiosks are closed, and the air smells of exhaust and rain. He follows her to the wrought iron gate and waits while she keys in the code. When the door buzzes open under her hand, he catches himself rubbing the back of his neck and smiles self-consciously.

She doesn't say _come in_. He doesn't answer _I shouldn't_.

After the burr of scooter engines on the street, and the occasional whoop of sirens, the alley that she leads him along is amazingly silent. Ivy and creepers climb the stones, and she guides him past carved doorways and low walls to the door of her apartment. She doesn't switch on the lights. Upstairs, she turns to him as if this is something she's wanted for a long time. He touches her cheek and leans down to kiss her, and there's so much strangeness in that simple action that for a moment he has to close his eyes and _breathe_. She slides his coat from his shoulders, and he cups her face in both hands and kisses her like a drowning man opening his mouth to the water. Her lips are warm but her fingertips are cold, unknotting his tie, undoing his shirt buttons one by one, and then slipping across his chest.

He's older. So is she. This isn't about expectations. In the dark, she can't see the grey in his hair and he'll never know if she dyes the silver away. She's as beautiful as she ever was when he knew her, and the memory of her curves is nothing to the reality under his hands. The bed is cool at first, but it warms quickly when they lie on the sheets, naked, their hands clasped as they kiss.

Women's bodies haven't changed. He traces familiar paths, first with his hands and then with his mouth. He places wet, soft-lipped kisses along her breasts and sweeps his fingers over the muscles of her inner thighs. She's dry, at first, but he's patient, and by the time he's fully hard, she's pushing her hips into the press of his palm.

He lies on his left side. She's in front of him. He enters her on one slow gasp, his fingers still moving against her mons. She breathes, breathes, and he mouths her shoulder to stop himself from whispering _like this, was it always good like this?_ into the arching curve of her neck. Her hand reaching back to squeeze his hip is enough of an answer, and the words are the last thing he wants. He rolls her nipple between his finger and thumb, then returns to her clit. He strokes inside her, drawing out his pleasure in the friction between them, the hot clasp of her body.

She tightens around him, and he moves with her, nudging her legs a little farther apart. He knows she comes once, and maybe she has a second orgasm when he loses control near the end. He finishes with fast, jagged thrusts and his face buried in her shoulder.

When it's over, she twists her head to kiss him. He tastes salt and doesn't know if it's sweat, doesn't know if it's his or hers. He holds her, afterwards, on the sex-scented sheets, on a spring night on the other side of the world. Maybe neither of them sleeps.

The next morning he stands at the window looking out into the pearl grey dawn. His shirt's undone at the collar, the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and his coat is draped carefully over the chair behind him. He holds a café au lait in a demitasse too small to warm his hands. The fob of his hotel key is a weight in his pants pocket, and he runs a fingertip over its edge, while the sunrise burns the city from grey to orange.

She comes downstairs fully dressed, and in that instant no time at all has passed and they're back at Princeton Plainsboro with nothing between them but one bad date and a history of decisions they haven't regretted yet. It's only when he tries to smile that he remembers.

She holds the door. He pulls on his coat and straightens the collar, preparing for the morning damp. It rained again last night; he heard the rushing whisper of it in his sleep and his chest hurt so badly that he had to bite his lip to keep any sound from escaping.

They don't say the old words, of _I'll be in touch_ and _of course I'll call_. They aren't colleagues any more. Her voice is husky and low when she says, "Goodbye, James." The name sounds wrong on her lips, but it's the best word he has for himself now. He murmurs "Lisa," into her hair when he kisses her cheek, and her eyes are more deeply blue when he pulls away. He smiles awkwardly, to the floor, to her shoulder, to her hand that he presses before he goes, and in the end, the names they don't say linger between them like ghosts.


End file.
